Ye Cheng's Origins... Hard Work Saw It, Why Is Sweat on My Head

Inside the orphanage.

“It’s this late already! Every last one of you, shut up and get back to bed!”

A particularly abrasive voice echoed through the room. The noisy atmosphere fell silent in an instant. It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop; the only sound left was the soft rhythm of breathing.

A middle-aged woman with a broad, fleshy face stood by the door in the orphanage staff uniform, a feather duster in hand.

Facing her was a large group of bizarre children—the very same “Pokémon” Ye Cheng had mentioned.

Oh, good Lord. Just look at those intelligent eyes. And then there were the two little tigers…

So the song “Two Tigers” wasn’t merely a nursery rhyme after all. It was based on real life: one had no eyes, and the other had no ears.

A rather hellish joke—but here, it was simply part of everyday life.

You might be called “flawed jade” by other people, but sorry—this place was the mine’s loading dock, where flawed jade like that was everywhere…

It was strikingly avant-garde. Just working in a place like this required considerable courage. Anyone with a weak constitution would surely have nightmares.

The people who stayed behind were no angels, either. The staff had long since been replaced by all sorts of relatives of Chen Youliang.

Surprised? Even a place like this had its legendary sinecure jobs. All kinds of losses could be reimbursed by the authorities. Since everything went to their own people, the books were easy enough to falsify.

Left hand to right hand—couldn’t be simpler.

Bad debts?

Sorry, those simply didn’t exist. Any excuse would do, and the books would balance themselves. Medical expenses for someone who had fallen ill, the loss of various tools at the orphanage…

There were a great many strange “Pokémon” in the orphanage, and quite a few of them were not fully mentally developed. With just a little prompting and suggestion, they would repeat whatever they were told.

And even if they refused to cooperate, one could simply say they had something wrong with their heads and were babbling nonsense…

The final say belonged to their “loving father,” Director Chen.

If you said something was right and Director Chen agreed, then it was right.

If you said something was wrong but Director Chen said it was right, then it was still right.

Those who understood the situation were already in tears. This was Director Chen’s grace—an indebtedness they could never repay in an entire lifetime. Director Chen guided, corrected, and rescued these socially defective young people who had gone astray…

How deeply moving!

As the supreme authority—at least within the orphanage—Chen Youliang’s word was absolute.

The brainless were afraid of losing their meals. They possessed a primal fear and naturally never resisted. Those with brains were afraid of being remembered, of being singled out, of being assigned even more work. Even when they fell ill and received no treatment, they still wouldn’t resist…

The orphanage remained trapped in an unspoken atmosphere of high pressure. Even when one or two rebellious, disobedient sprouts occasionally appeared, any sign of trouble was quickly snuffed out.

Before someone who held absolute control over all resources, every act of resistance was pitifully small and frail.

Go hungry for a couple of meals, and they would learn their lesson. A dog would come crawling back on its own once it was hungry…

But within the orphanage, Chen Youliang actually did not play the role of a villain. On the contrary, he played a very positive role—the classic good cop paired with a bad cop.

The “bad cop,” naturally, was none other than the other employees at the orphanage. They were all related to Chen Youliang in one way or another, and the things they did had clearly been condoned—or even ordered—by Chen Youliang himself.

Whenever things went too far, Chen Youliang would step forward to protect the children who had been bullied, once again building up his shining public image...

It was a method of control that was practically brainwashing. Even a perfectly normal person, growing up in an environment like that from childhood, would be changed little by little, gradually becoming another member of the oppressed masses.

Not to mention the people in this orphanage, most of whom already suffered from various disabilities. They had been abandoned by society and pushed to its fringes...

Among such a flock of sheep, the island effect was even more pronounced. With all these tactics working in combination, the situation had become what it was today.

And it had never been broken—not once in all these years...

Until Ye Cheng appeared.

A man Chen Youliang hated so much that his teeth ached, yet could do nothing about.

The orphanage had received far too many children. Some had been abandoned at the gate in all sorts of ways; some had been brought there after strangers begged for help or kindhearted people found them; others had gone through the proper reporting procedures before being assigned a place there by the government.

There were simply too many. Chen Youliang could not remember how any of them had arrived. Ye Cheng, however, had left a bit of an impression...

There were several reasons for that. Ye Cheng had no obvious defects and was even quite handsome. A child like that being abandoned at an orphanage most likely meant there was some sort of illness hidden inside him.

That was one feature that set him apart from the others. What made his story even more legendary—almost like something out of a novel—was the way he had been found and what he had gone through before arriving.

Ye Cheng had been assigned to the orphanage through the government’s centralized placement system.

A sanitation worker had discovered him in a massive garbage dump. When he was found, he was filthy and covered in quite a few injuries, as though he had been rummaging through the trash and had been scraped and battered in the process...

His body was extremely frail. It was not hard to tell that he had probably been abandoned not long after birth. It was a disastrous start to life, comparable to being born in the women’s restroom of a vocational high school—or perhaps even worse.

After all, a baby born in a vocational high school’s women’s restroom still had a small chance of getting lucky and being rescued by the dean of discipline. But this godforsaken place was truly the kind of place where not even a bird would bother to land—a place where one could only wait to die.

Fortunately, Heaven took pity on Ye Cheng and somehow roused a sanitation worker to pass by...

After changing hands several times, he eventually ended up at the orphanage, falling into Chen Youliang’s hands. His living conditions were comparable to Verdun during World War II...

Inferior baby formula, rice gruel, and the periodically refreshed “mysterious superfood for babies” concocted by some mommy blogger—rice water. Fed in such an absurd way, Ye Cheng somehow managed to survive.

And what was more... he even grew up looking pretty good, at least compared with the other Pokémon in the orphanage.

Before he was even a month old, he had developed intelligence, and his eyes had become lively. Before he was a year old, he could already speak. As for when he began to understand human speech specifically... there was no way to determine that.

It was even possible that he had understood everything from the very moment his mind awakened.

The instant he received a proper education, the sky over the orphanage began to change, and Chen Youliang’s nightmare began... It was also the place where Ye Cheng’s dream began.

Ye Cheng grew at an utterly abnormal speed. Once he had absorbed enough knowledge, he began putting it into practice.

Chen Youliang successfully received the first… elbow strike of his life at the orphanage.

“Bang!”

“Aaaaaah!”

The bathroom exploded. After investigating for an entire day and night, Chen Youliang—now covered head to toe in feces—still failed to catch the culprit behind the incident. But his anger needed an outlet, and he clearly realized that someone had begun challenging his position.

His first act of retaliation was to target the somewhat older children in the orphanage. He interrogated them one by one, threatened them, and tried everything he could to uncover the mastermind behind it all.

Unfortunately… he failed.

In the end, the matter was dropped. Chen Youliang summoned everyone over the age of five and questioned them all. He applied every kind of psychological pressure and hinting tactic imaginable, only to reach one conclusion…

This time, he was simply out of luck.

It was only many years later that Chen Youliang suddenly realized… the person who had blown up the bathroom and messed with him back then might very well have been Ye Cheng, who had been around three years old at the time.

He had given Chen Youliang one hell of a hit.

Had it worked?

It had worked extremely well—so well that Chen Youliang didn’t figure it out until many years later. Even back then, Ye Cheng had already set his sights on him.

However… his wings had not yet grown strong enough. It wasn’t time to confront Chen Youliang head-on.

After the “bathroom incident,” things remained peaceful for quite a long time.

And then… Chen Youliang’s tires were slashed.

Chen Youliang: “…”

He was still furious, still conducted a thorough investigation, still found absolutely nothing, and still… had no choice but to accept his fate.

He clearly realized that someone at the orphanage had noticed what he was doing. Someone was dissatisfied with him—or perhaps even secretly gathering evidence, waiting for a chance to take him down.

Someone with that kind of mindset and ability to carry it out could only be an adult, or… someone close to adulthood.

Chen Youliang didn’t believe that children under twelve or thirteen could hide anything in their eyes. As for anyone younger than that… it was even more impossible.

In the end, the extremely cautious Chen Youliang investigated every child over the age of ten, digging into their pasts and trying to uncover the culprit’s motive.

He still found nothing.

Four-year-old Ye Cheng stood in the least noticeable corner of the crowd, silently watching everything unfold. At the same time, he was eating bubble gum he had fished out of the one-eyed Pokémon pouch lying nearby.

Mmm… sweet. Real tasty.

Time continued to pass, and Ye Cheng became the most dazzling presence in the orphanage.

There was only one reason for it…

He crushed everyone else with his intelligence.

Only the Pokémon around Ye Cheng knew how much effort and sweat had gone into this journey… He was especially fierce at mealtimes. If they weren’t paying attention, the food on their plates would somehow end up in Ye Cheng’s bowl.

His hard work was clearly visible…

In the sweat covering their foreheads.

As for studying… almost no one had ever seen Ye Cheng actually reading a book.

Why “almost” no one?

Because Lin Baizhi was the exception.

By then, she already knew Ye Cheng, and she had begun elbowing every female nearby with wild abandon, claiming him for herself.

If anyone had ever seen Ye Cheng studying, it had to be Lin Baizhi. She wished she could hold on to him even while sleeping and follow him even to the bathroom…

Of course, that didn’t mean she hadn’t actually done so.

Ye Cheng had become the brightest star in the orphanage—the subject of Chen Youliang’s grand promises and boasts, even serving as part of his own “achievements.”

Through Ye Cheng’s success, Chen Youliang could keep exaggerating the results in front of wealthy donors, telling them that their money had all been put to good use.

If Chen Youliang had once hoped to send Ye Cheng to a good family in exchange for a sum of money, he now wanted Ye Cheng to remain in the orphanage forever, serving as a money tree.

Among all the money trees, Ye Cheng was unquestionably the most profitable. With him, there was no need to make money by playing the victim or soliciting sympathy.

Instead, they could use positive results to report back to the wealthy donors—and even to the government!

The wealthy donors felt spiritually fulfilled, believing that their money had gone to the right place. They were satisfied.

The government saw the results and believed that, under Chen Youliang’s management, the orphanage had nurtured an outstanding pillar of the nation. They were satisfied.

The orphanage’s ability to attract money became even more impressive, and its efforts toward both groups had produced satisfactory results…

Everyone was satisfied.

It seemed… everyone was happy?

But was that really the case?

There are bad people among the crowd…

“You old bastard, just wait to die! I’ll get you a Maserati within three days!”

Chen Youliang: “???”

The commotion outside instantly dragged Chen Youliang back from his memories. His eyes were still filled with terror…

Once again, Ye Cheng’s voice had appeared in his mind, like a nightmare.

He no longer knew how many times this had happened recently.

He always had a feeling that Ye Cheng was preparing something big for him…

A deeply ominous feeling.

“Why are there so many cars outside?”

Chen Youliang frowned. He rose from his office on the second floor and looked down.

Cars—so many cars, packed tightly together. A huge crowd had arrived!

Chen Youliang: “???”

Soon, an even more shocking and terrifying sight appeared.

Among the crowd, he saw a familiar face…

Lin Tianxiong!

The biggest benefactor the orphanage had had in all these years!

Without exception!

Chen Youliang: “!!!”